An Interview with Alan Cox

Our series of unexpurgated interviews with Linux kernel pioneers continues with this e-conversation with Alan Cox.

Welcome to the unexpurgated version of
Linux Journal's Linux Kernel Who's Who. If you
haven't yet seen our June 2000 issue, which features 40 profiles of
some of the kernel's pioneers (hackers like Lars Wirzenius, Pauline
Middlelink and, of course, Linus Torvalds), make sure you get a
copy from your nearest newsstand - or your nearest Linux Journal
web site. If you have already read the profiles, then our
unexpurgated versions of the original interviews, which were
e-mailed to each major contributor to the Linux kernel, may reveal
a few surprises, and a lot more detail.

We'll be posting the original interviews here on the
Linux Journal web site over the next several
weeks. So sit back, and enjoy a few words from some of the folks
who helped make Linux possible!

--David Penn

An Interview with Alan Cox

Linux Journal: How
did you first learn about Linux? What were you doing in your own
life at the time?

Alan Cox: I was hacking bits
of ideas for my own OS and working on a MUD called AberMUD. I had
pondered getting a decent PC, since the Amiga was getting a bit
long in the tooth. 386BSD came out, and it looked like there was
finally an OS worth running on x86 hardware. Linux came out around
the same time, but didn't need an FPU, so I started running
Linux.

LJ: What attracted
you to it, compared to FreeBSD, proprietary Unix systems, or
lucrative areas such as Windows? What made you want to help with
development?

Alan: Linux was a lot easier
to set up in the early days; MCC Linux and then SLS made it really
easy to install by the standards of the time. I looked at the BSD
systems, but I liked the way the GPL meant I was writing code that
nobody could run off with. I didn't really chose not to hack
386BSD; I was just having too much fun with Linux to bother.

LJ: What part of
Linux were you personally interested in and working on? How are you
still involved with Linux development?

Alan: Initially, I was
working on the networking code after Ross Biro stopped maintaining
it, and Fred van Kempen basically dropped the mainstream code to
rewrite it. I ended up maintaining the code and getting it going.
Nowadays, I do the stable kernel releases and a fair bit of patch
merging and debugging of drivers.

LJ: What was most
important to you about Linux? What's the very best thing about
Linux?

Alan: I think the most
important thing about Linux is that it gives people the ability to
do what they want. The "Penguin Powered" logos people love should
really be "Penguin Empowered". That, I think, is the best thing
about Linux, too. We've given the computer back to the user.

LJ: How important
was the GNU project, and how did the GNU Hurd factor in to your
thinking? Should Linux be known as GNU/Linux?

Alan: I knew about GNU
several years before. In fact, in many ways, Linux exists because
GNU chose to pursue the Hurd rather than using UZI as their Unix OS
core, as they could have done. GNU/Linux is perhaps overstating it,
but ignoring the FSF contribution is even worse. Richard has
perhaps made a few enemies by insisting on GNU/Linux - but it does
remind people.

It's really x11/BSD/GNU/....../Linux.

LJ: What was it
like to be working with others over the Internet at a time when
several computer luminaries thought that organizing successful
software development over the Internet was difficult, if not
impossible? Did you realize how revolutionary this approach
was?

Alan: I don't think it was
revolutionary. People had been doing it for a long time before
that, a very long time. The modern Internet and large-scale access
just made that project a bit easier - the lack of people and slow
networks killed earlier equivalent projects like UZI and OMU,
stopping them from spreading.

One thing Linux taught me: far too many people write about
software design, but have never run a real-world computing
business. The folks who seem to get software design right are
mostly engineers. They want it to work, they want to solve the
problem and they aren't totally obsessed by reusable components,
object orientation, Java ... whatever the meme of the month
is.

LJ: What are you
doing with your life now? What's a typical day like? How do you
find time for work and Linux, and how do you balance free software
with the need to make a living (or the desire to become rich)? What
do you do for fun?

Alan: I work for Red Hat. I
work from home, hacking free software - it's great. It's been a bit
busy, but I have a lot of fun when I'm visiting shows and abroad,
both meeting the people and also getting to see other places. It
isn't just the shows; I've visited the depths of Iceland with a
bunch of mad 4x4 drivers, spent a week in a very snowy Vienna, and
been to the Glengarry Highland games in Canada.

LJ: Who do you
think other than Linus has had the most influence over the Linux
community, and why?

Alan: Umm, that might be me,
although I try not to. It really depends on which part of the
community you mean, or even outside of the community ...
People like Eric have had a big influence on business folks, which
I certainly don't have.

LJ: What do you
think is the most important addition or change needed by Linux in
order for it to succeed further? In what direction does Linux
development need to go? Where is Linux's future the brightest? What
is the #1 biggest threat to Linux today?

Alan: Probably the biggest
thing Linux needs now is better applications and user-space tools.
We need to take Linux to the level where you can give it to your
grandmother, and not expect a phone call back except to say
"thanks". The biggest thing the kernel needs now is
documentation.

I'm not sure what the threats to Linux really are. The
biggest one is probably Linux fragmenting. I don't think that is
going to happen in the mainstream, but we are already seeing a few
vendors pulling that way in embedded space.

The app vendors and the users, I don't think, will tolerate a
vendor going off at a tangent.

LJ: How do you
feel about Linux's current popularity? Would you have preferred it
stayed contained in the hacker community? Would it have survived on
the fringes?

Alan: It was a bit of a
surprise. On my first trip to Red Hat, they had about six people,
and the new boy was this Donnie Barnes guy. Now they are heading
for five hundred.

Linux would have survived on the fringes, I think. There has
always been a market for things people can actually play with and
tune.

LJ: Would it have
survived without the IPOs and financial backing? What impact has
the commercialization of Linux had? How do you feel about Linux
profiteering and the people who make millions off of other people's
volunteered efforts?

Alan: I'm working for a
vendor. I get regular mail from people trying to find Linux-aware
folks to hire. I think those who wrote code for fun have plenty of
opportunity to reap rewards. Even when I wasn't working for Red
Hat, it didn't bother me. I wrote it for fun, and the fact that
people found it useful was a greater reward than money. We've made
it possible to put computers into places that could never have
afforded Microsoft products.

LJ: How can Linux
compete with Microsoft in the desktop sector, and will we be able
to hold the commercial sector if we don't take the desktop as well?
Can we take the desktop without ruining the spirit of Linux by
dumbing it down? Where will our next areas of growth and expansion
be?

Alan: Trying to predict the
desktop is hard. Firstly, I think it's safe to say that the PC
desktop of today is probably the dinosaur of tomorrow. Most end
users want simpler systems. They want to trade flexibility for ease
of use, and power for size.

There will be plenty of people who choose the full PC, some
because they enjoy it and some because they need all the power.
Those, I suspect, are the minority.

The machines of tomorrow are mostly going to be web-oriented,
or very mobile (or both). People will expect them to just work.
Folks like Palm have taken the first stumbling steps in this
direction, with huge success.

Linux is a good OS for building embedded systems with, and to
be able to extensively customize. GNOME and KDE will give people a
good battle on the desktop and beyond.

LJ: How do you
feel about commercial applications being written for Linux, and
proprietary software and protocols in general? Do you run Linux
more for philosophical reasons or practical reasons? If something
that appeared to be better came along, would people jump ship?
Conversely, would we stay with Linux even if it somehow
degenerated, took a wrong turn, or stopped
progressing?

Alan: I don't believe open
source works for everything. There are some cases where the ideas
in the code truly have value, but not many. I don't currently use
any proprietary software generally, except Netscape. And Mozilla is
now within a hair's breadth of replacing that.

I like the flexibility and the control of free software. Most
of my experiences with proprietary software have either been
getting screwed as a user, or being part of a large company that
had to threaten its suppliers with lawsuits to get service.
Proprietary software could work, but not while software companies
spend all their time and effort lobbying the U.S. government to be
basically exempt from all reasonable law on quality and fairness to
the consumer, instead of giving people what they want.

LJ: Do you think
the community should support only open-source/free software? How
would the community survive hard times if there were a lag or down
time in the continuing success of the open-source methodology? Is
the free software philosophy strong enough and with enough
adherents to pull us through?

Alan: The real community
consists of those who contribute - not just code, but bug fixes,
documentation, etc. That community can survive a lot. Some of the
rest of the Linux user base is certainly there because "it's cool",
"it's not Microsoft" and for commercial reasons. It's up to the
free software methodology to work out for those people. If it does,
they will go that way.

LJ: How do you
feel about the different licenses? GPL, LGPL, QPL,
etc.?

Alan: The old Qt license was
a problem. I don't see one with their current licensing. Too many
licenses can be a problem, but the basic few we have now seem to
fit a wide spectrum of beliefs well.

LJ: Is there a
world outside of computers? Are you ever afraid that you'll wake up
one day and feel you have wasted your life in front of a
computer?

Alan: Most of what I am
doing, even that involving computers, is about people and
interacting with people. That's true for most computing use. People
are using e-mail, IRC, messaging systems and web-based discussion
systems a lot. It's about people communicating.

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